Swappiness needs to be reduced and zram swap added

[narotic]

Are you completely sure that swapping is the culprit? I ask because there recently have been some problems with stuttering in some x264 files. This has already been fixed upstream in the latest raspberry pi firmware, but that hasn't found its way yet to xbian stable. More info: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=215399

If it really is a lack of memory, then it might be easiest to just remove xbian-package-splash. That should free more than 25MB (RSS!) at the cost of some eyecandy:

Code:

1697 root      20   0 38160  28m  596 S   0.0  7.6   0:00.81 splash-daemon

Apt will complain that it's an essential package, so do it at your own risk. Personally I haven't noticed any side-effects yet other than that the Dim screensaver actually shows the terminal as background rather than a solid black.